This Work Originally Appeared In: Dennett, Daniel C. "Self-Portrait."

This work originally appeared in: Dennett, Daniel C. "Self-Portrait." A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, edited by S. Guttenplan. 236-244, Oxford: Blackwell Press, 1994. This is Daniel C. Dennett’s final draft before publication. It has been modified to reflect the pagination of the published version of the work. capitulation has just been completed, with a separate volume devoted to each half: The Intentional Stance (1987a) is all and only about content; Consciousness Explained (1991a) presupposes the theory of content in that volume and builds an expanded theory of consciousness. BEGINNINGS AND SOURCES Self Portrait Although quite a few philosophers agree by Daniel C. Dennett that content and consciousness are the two main issues confronting the philosophy of S. Guttenplan, ed., mind, many - perhaps most - follow tradition A Companion to the in favouring the opposite order: consciousness, Philosophy of Mind, they think, is the fundamental Blackwell Press, Oxford, 1994 phenomenon, upon which all intentionality ultimately depends. This difference of perspective is fundamental, infecting the intuitions with which all theorizing must begin, and it is thus the source of some of the deepest and most persistent disagreements in the field. It is clear to me how I came by my renegade vision of the order of dependence: as a graduate student at Oxford, I developed a deep distrust of the methods I saw other philosophers employing, and decided that before I could trust any of my intuitions about the mind, I had to figure Dennett, Daniel C. In my opinion, the two out how the brain could possibly accomplish main topics in the philosophy of mind are the mind's work. I knew next to CONTENT and CONSCIOUSNESS. As the title nothing about the relevant science, but I of my first book. Content and Consciousness had always been fascinated with how (1969) suggested, that is the order in which things worked - clocks, engines, magic they must be addressed: first, a theory of tricks. (In fact, had I not been raised in · content or INTENTIONALITY - a phenomenon a dyed-in-the-wool 'arts and humanities' more fundamental than consciousness academic family, I probably would have - and then, building on that foundation, a become an engineer, but this option would theory of consciousness. Over the years I never have occurred to anyone in our have found myself recapitulating this basic family.) So I began educating myself, always structure twice, partly in order to respond with an eye to the curious question of how to various philosophical objections, but the mechanical responses of 'stupid' more importantly, because my research on neurons could be knit into a fabric of activity foundational issues in cognitive science led that actually discriminated meanings. me into different aspects of the problems. Somehow it had to be possible, I assumed. The articles in the first half of Brainstorms since it was obvious to me that DUALISM (1978a) composed in effect a more detailed was a last resort, to be postponed indefinitely. theory of content, and the articles in the So from the outset I worked from the second half were concerned with specific 'third-person point of view' of science, and problems of consciousness. The second re- took my task to be building - or rather 236 sketching the outlines of - a physical structure foundation of everything I have done since that could be seen to accomplish the then. As I put it in Brainstorms (1978a), puzzling legerdemain of the mind. At the brains are syntactic engines that can mimic time - the mid-60s - no one else in philosophy the competence of semantic engines. (See also was attempting to build that structure, the thought experiment - a forerunner of so it was a rather lonely enterprise, and Searle's Chinese Room - about being locked most of the illumination and encouragement in the control room of a giant robot, in I could find came from the work of a 1978b.) Note how this point forces the few visionaries in science and engineering: order of dependence of consciousness on Warren McCulloch, Donald MacKay, intentionality. The appreciation of meanings Donald Hebb, Ross Ashby, Allen Newell, - their discrimination and delectation - is Herbert Simon, and J. Z. Young come to central to our vision of consciousness, but mind. Miller, Galanter and Pribram's 1960 this conviction that I, on the inside, deal classic, Plans and the Structure of Behaviour, directly with meanings turns out to be was a dimly understood but much appreciated something rather like a benign 'user illusion'. beacon, and Michael Arbib's 1964 What Descartes thought was most primer, Brains, Machines and Mathematics, certain - his immediate introspective grasp was very helpful in clearing away some of of the items of consciousness - turns out to the fog. be not even quite true, but rather a metaphorical Given my lack of formal training in any by-product of the way our brains science, this was a dubious enterprise, but I do their approximating work. This vision was usually forgiven my naïveté by those tied in beautifully with a doctrine of Quine's who helped me into their disciplines, and that I had actually vehemently resisted as although at the time I considered myself an undergraduate: the indeterminacy of driven by (indeed defined by) my disagreements radical translation. I could now see why, as with my philosophical mentors, Quine famously insisted, indeterminacy was QUINE and RYLE, in retrospect it is clear 'of a piece with' Brentano's thesis of the that my deep agreement with both of them irreducibility of the intentional, and why about the nature of philosophy - so deep as those irreducible intentional contexts were to be utterly unexamined and tacit - was unavoidably a 'dramatic idiom' rather than the primary source of such intellectual an expression of unvarnished truth. I could security as I had. also see how to re-interpret the two philosophical The first stable conclusion I reached, after works on intentionality that had had I discovered that my speculative forays the most influence on me, Anscombe's always wandered to the same place, was Intention (1957) and Taylor's The Explanation that the only thing brains could do was to of Behaviour (1964). approximate the responsivity to meanings If your initial allegiance is to the physical that we presuppose in our everyday mentalistic sciences and the third-person point of view, discourse. When mechanical push this disposition of the issues can seem not came to shove, a brain was always going to just intuitively acceptable, but inevitable, do what it was caused to do by current, satisfying, natural. If on the other hand local, mechanical circumstances, whatever your starting point is the traditional philosophical it ought to do, whatever a God's-eye view allegiance to the mind and the might reveal about the actual meanings of deliverances of introspection, this vision can its current states. But over the long haul, seem outrageous. Perhaps the clearest view brains could be designed - by evolutionary of this watershed of intuitions can be processes - to do the right thing (from the obtained from an evolutionary perspective. point of view of meaning) with high reliability. There was a time, before life on earth, when This found its first published expression there was neither intentionality nor consciousness, in Content and Consciousness (1969, §9, but eventually replication got 'Function and Content') and it remains the under way and simple organisms emerged. 237 Suppose we ask of them: Were they conscious? alike. The tactic did not work for many Did their states exhibit intentionality? thinkers, who continued to harbour the It all depends on what these key terms hunch that I was leaving something out; are taken to mean, of course, but underneath there was, they thought, a special sort of the strategic decisions one might sensitivity - we might call it animal consciousness make about pre-emptive definition of terms - that no thermostat or fancy lies a fundamental difference of outlook. robot could enjoy, but that all mammals One family of intuitions is comfortable and birds (and perhaps all fish, reptiles, declaring that while these earliest ancestors insects, molluscs … ) shared. Since robotic were unconscious automata, not metaphysically devices of considerably greater behavioural different from thermostats or simple and perceptual complexity than the simplest robotic toys, some of their states were of these organisms are deemed unconscious nevertheless semantically evaluable, These by this school of thought, it amounts to organisms were, in my terms, rudimentary some sort of latter-day vitalism. The more intentional systems, and somewhere in the one learns about how simple organisms intervening ascent of complexity, a special actually work, the more dubious this hunch subset of intentional systems has emerged: about a special, organic sort of sensation the subset of conscious beings. According to becomes, but to those who refuse to look at this vision, then, the intentionality of our the science, it is a traditional idea that is unconscious ancestors was as real as intentionality about as comfortable today as it was in the ever gets; it was just rudimentary. seventeenth century, when many were horrified It is on this foundation of unconscious by Descartes's claims about the intentionality that the higher-order complexities mechanicity of (non-human) animals. In developed that have culminated in any event, definitional gambits are ineffective what we call consciousness. The other against it, so in later work I dropped the family of intuitions declares that if these tactic and the nomenclature of 'aware1' and early organisms were mere unconscious 'aware2' - but not the underlying intuitions. automata, then their so-called intentionality My accounts of content and consciousness was not the real thing, Some philosophers have subsequently been revised in of this persuasion are tempted to insist that rather minor ways and elaborated in rather the earliest living organisms were conscious major ways.

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